"And also, we are providing, you know, a nuclear power plant in the north, two light water systems, so some 4 or 5 billion dollars we are providing to meet with North Korean requests on the condition North Korea will not produce a nuclear weapon"
About this Quote
Kim Dae Jung’s sentence has the clipped, bureaucratic cadence of a leader trying to make a risky bargain sound like simple housekeeping. The casual hedges - “you know,” “some 4 or 5 billion dollars” - aren’t verbal sloppiness so much as political cushioning. He’s describing a deal whose moral and strategic stakes are enormous, but he narrates it like a line item, signaling: this is manageable, this is rational, this is the price of stability.
The intent is twofold. Internationally, it frames South Korea (and its partners) as pragmatic problem-solvers offering energy infrastructure, not indulgences. Domestically, it sells engagement by translating it into tangible hardware: light-water reactors, a plant in the north. Concrete objects help domesticate an abstract fear - a nuclear North Korea - and rebrand negotiation as a form of national defense.
The subtext is the uneasy logic of late-1990s diplomacy on the peninsula: you don’t “trust” North Korea; you buy time, you create incentives, you bind them to commitments that are easier to monitor. Light-water reactors matter because they carry a technical promise of lower proliferation risk than alternative reactor types. The phrase “on the condition” does heavy lifting, performing conditionality as control, even as everyone understands conditions are only as strong as verification and enforcement.
Contextually, this belongs to the era of the Sunshine Policy and the broader post-Cold War wager that integration and economic carrots could temper security threats. It’s not naive optimism; it’s a leader’s attempt to turn the unthinkable - nuclear escalation - into a negotiable transaction, and to make that transaction legible to a skeptical public.
The intent is twofold. Internationally, it frames South Korea (and its partners) as pragmatic problem-solvers offering energy infrastructure, not indulgences. Domestically, it sells engagement by translating it into tangible hardware: light-water reactors, a plant in the north. Concrete objects help domesticate an abstract fear - a nuclear North Korea - and rebrand negotiation as a form of national defense.
The subtext is the uneasy logic of late-1990s diplomacy on the peninsula: you don’t “trust” North Korea; you buy time, you create incentives, you bind them to commitments that are easier to monitor. Light-water reactors matter because they carry a technical promise of lower proliferation risk than alternative reactor types. The phrase “on the condition” does heavy lifting, performing conditionality as control, even as everyone understands conditions are only as strong as verification and enforcement.
Contextually, this belongs to the era of the Sunshine Policy and the broader post-Cold War wager that integration and economic carrots could temper security threats. It’s not naive optimism; it’s a leader’s attempt to turn the unthinkable - nuclear escalation - into a negotiable transaction, and to make that transaction legible to a skeptical public.
Quote Details
| Topic | Peace |
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