At the end of last week, President Moon Jae-in appointed three people who are likely to become his new North Korea team.

His choices are quite interesting and carry a great deal of unintended symbolism. At first approximation, one can say that each of them represents one of the three major groups that form the upper crust of the Moon administration. 

The newly appointed Minister for Unification, Lee In-young, is a former student radical firebrand whose political career has been largely based on his fame and connections from the 1980s.

Suh Hoon, the former head of the South Korean National Intelligence Service, was moved to the position of Director of the National Security Office, more or less equivalent to that of the National Security Advisor in the U.S. He is a lifelong technocrat, a remarkably non-political North Korea specialist and analyst who has spent his lifetime working inside the South Korean intelligence bureaucracy. 

Park Jie-won, who replaced Suh Hoon as the new head of intelligence, is much older than the others. He can be best described as a rather opportunistic but skillful and very successful political operator; his major interests, however, lay in the area of domestic politics. 

SUH HOON: THE SEASONED BUREAUCRAT

Suh Hoon was born in 1954. He graduated from the Seoul National University, by far the most prestigious school in Korea, and then earned an MA from Johns Hopkins University (SAIS or School of Advanced International Studies).

It was a typical start to an academic career in South Korea, and indeed, Suh initially saw himself as an academic and professor. 

But in 1980, he was approached by recruiters from South Korean Intelligence, then officially known as the Central Intelligence Agency. After some hesitation, he accepted their proposal. 

The decision was probably a difficult one. The Korean CIA had three major functions: collection of foreign intelligence in general, spying on North Korea specifically, and maintaining domestic security. Given that this was during the era of South Korean dictatorship, this third function was the most controversial and had a noticeable negative impact on the agency’s image.

Suh had nothing to do with these contentious and politically dangerous activities, though. From 1980 until 2008, he remained a South Korean intelligence official dealing exclusively with North Korea, slowly but surely ascending the ranks of his agency while avoiding excessive interaction with the era’s turbulent politics.

Between 1997 and 1999, Suh spent two years inside North Korea in an official capacity as the head of the KEDO’s office which supervised the construction of light water reactors. He has probably lived in North Korea longer than any other South Korean since the end of the Korean War.

In the early 2000s, he was very much involved in both open and secret talks with the North Koreans, including preparations for the North-South summits of 2000 and 2007. It’s known that he has developed some good personal connections with top North Korean officials and, reputably, they sometimes used to drink and talk until very late.

Suh Hoon has probably lived in North Korea longer than any other South Korean since the end of the Korean War.

In spite of being a rather non-political technocrat, he still resigned in February 2008, following the defeat of President Roh Moo-hyun and the conservatives’ landslide victory in the elections. At the time, he was the third deputy director of the National Intelligence Service (NIS) and the top spymaster in charge of North Korea issues.

After his resignation, Suh Hoon largely returned to academic life. Aside from teaching at the prestigious Ewha Womans University, he earned a Ph.D. thesis on North Korean foreign policy under Kim Jong Il that was highly appraised by North Korea experts.

He also emphasized, in his rare press appearances, that the intelligence service should not be under partisan control and should not be politicized.

Suh, who has probably always had a measure of sympathy toward liberals, began to support Moon Jae-in during the 2012 elections. In 2017, he often briefed then-presidential candidate Moon about North Korean politics.

After Moon Jae-in was elected to the presidency in 2017, Suh returned to the intelligence service as the new head of the NIS. In this capacity, he played a major role in dissolving the dangerous political-diplomatic crisis of 2017, when, for a brief period, a military conflict in Korea seemed possible.

In March 2018, he officially visited North Korea and met with Kim Jong Un. This visit was a major turning point in creating the conditions for future inter-Korean summits, in which Suh was of course very much involved.

Yet in his statements to the press, he never openly expressed the excessive optimism that was ubiquitous among all South Korean government politicians and officials in 2018.

This does not mean that Suh was in any way critical of the summit diplomacy and denuclearization efforts. He simply avoided saying these efforts would definitely bring a complete change to the situation in and around Korea.

PARK JIE-WON: THE INTERLOCUTOR

Park Jie-won, the new head of the NIS, has been a prominent player in South Korean politics since the 1990s. Little in his early background suggested his later turn of events, however. He is essentially a career politician – skillful, opportunistic, and ambitious, but also deeply realistic and commonsensical.

Park began his career as an employee of the LG company but moved to the U.S. in the 1970s, where he established his own business.

This business was remarkably successful and, in 1980, Park became the head of the Korean American Association of Greater New York.

He also had quite good relations with General Chun Doo-hwan, who, in 1980, imposed a military dictatorship in South Korea. Park openly embraced the 1980 coup that brought Chun to power as “a coup to save the nation.”

Soon, though, he performed the first of his political and ideological volte-faces. In 1982, Park met with Kim Dae-jung, the leader of the South Korean pro-democracy opposition who, at the time, was exiled to the United States.

After their talk, which lasted around five hours, Park openly denounced his earlier views as “stupid mistakes” and that through the talk he “finally saw the truth of history.” After that, he became Kim’s loyal and capable lieutenant.

Park was a welcome arrival to the Kim Dae-jung camp. Kim had a number of followers, but none were as skilled at establishing and managing political relations as Park.

Park essentially became Kim Dae-jung’s major spokesperson; he was remarkably good at dealing with the media. 

When, in late 1997, Kim was elected president, Park was rewarded for his hard work with the position of Minister of Culture and Tourism — a role that initially had very little to do with North Korea issues. 

However, this changed very quickly. President Kim had pinned a lot of hope in the dramatic improvement of relations with North Korea, and Park became a major player in this game, acting as Kim’s personal envoy to North Korea. In this capacity, he met Kim Jong Il and other North Korean officials a number of times, and also seems to have developed his own channels of unofficial communication with the North Korean government.

Among other things, Park was a key figure in what was known as the 2003 “money transfer scandal.”

Soon after the first inter-Korean summit, it became known that the South Korean government had paid the North a significant amount of money just to ensure that the North Koreans would agree to talk. Such a payment meant a number of irregularities; Park was made into a scapegoat and spent a few years in prison before being released in 2007.

After his release, he was very critical of President Roh Moo-hyun, who he saw as responsible for his imprisonment.

In 2008, however, Roh Moo-hyun, himself under investigation over corruption, committed suicide. This instantly made him a hero and martyr among South Korean radicals. Park reacted to this change of mood by immediately switching to praising the late president.

Park Jie-won is essentially a career politician – skillful, opportunistic, and ambitious, but also deeply realistic and commonsensical

Park had been closely connected with Korean liberals since 1982 but had belonged to a different faction to that of current president Moon Jae-in.

Nevertheless, Park has always been good at maintaining many amicable relationships across the political spectrum. He also remained quite adept at dealing with journalists.

The idealist — if somewhat opportunistic — dealmaker’s ability may even have played a major role in former-president Park Geun-hye’s impeachment in December 2016. He seems to have been a key figure in forging the agreements that resulted in her downfall.

While Park Jie-won was not a member of Moon Jae-in’s faction and frequently criticized him in public, he predictably stopped these attacks after Moon became president. In fact, Park re-made himself into a Moon supporter.

The decision to promote Park is probably based largely on his achievements during the early 2000s when he was essentially Seoul’s ambassador to the North.

At the same time, Park’s remarkable track record as a career politician, his broad connections, and common sense are also likely valued by the President. One wonders, though, whether such qualities will be that useful in his new position as South Korea’s top spymaster.

LEE IN-YOUNG: THE FORMER FIREBRAND TURNED POLITICIAN

Lee In-young, recently appointed the Minister for Unification, is a former student activist, a living reminder of the radical, not to say revolutionary, roots of the current South Korean administration.

Lee was born in 1964. He entered Korea University in the early 1980s and plunged into radical student politics. 

At that time, South Korean universities were hotbeds of radical student activism. By the mid-1980s, Lee was not merely the head of Korea University Students Union, but raised to the position of the head Jeondaehyop (National Council of Student Representatives), the nation-wide alliance of student radical groups.

In 1985-1986, he was arguably the most recognizable face of the student movement, even though back then it was widely rumored that he largely served as the figurehead while the real decisions were made by a shadow brain trust behind him.

During the early 1990s, the majority of former student radicals seriously revised their earlier radical views. They were shocked by the collapse of the Communist bloc, whose system many of them saw as something to emulate.

The famine in North Korea also demonstrated that the DPRK was not a paradise of workers and peasants, contrary to what many of the student radicals believed in the 1980s.

Lee’s de-radicalization, however, was probably somewhat less pronounced than many of his friends’. Like many former activists, he gravitated towards Kim Dae-jung’s Democratic Party, which he eventually joined in 2000.

In 2004, after some trials and tribulations, he was elected as a member of parliament.

His politics were fairly typical of the more radical section of Korean liberals during that period. He opposed sending Korean troops to Iraq to fight alongside the Americans, and he also opposed the Free Trade Agreement with the United States.

Lee In-young, recently appointed the Minister for Unification, is a former student activist, a living reminder of the radical, not to say revolutionary, roots of the current South Korean administration

Lee remained a relatively unremarkable politician. His statements tended to lack detail: he would speak about lofty topics such as “fair society” and “social justice,” but seldom went much beyond that.

Interestingly though, in May 2015, he did gain some attention in regard to North Korea issues. Lee suggested that then-President Park Geun-hye should immediately meet with Kim Jong Un, who was then (wrongly) expected to soon go to Moscow, and assured that the liberals, then in opposition, would wholeheartedly support such a decision.

Lee also said that he believed the ROK-U.S. alliance was vital for Korea’s security and that it should be maintained, but at the same time, it should not be excessively strengthened. Such a mixed attitude is fairly typical for those of his age and background.

At the same time, Lee is no ideologue. While he probably has some illusions in regard to North Korea, he can’t really be seen as a South Korean Juche devotee.

It’s also worth mentioning that he was recently acting as the Floor Leader of the Democratic Party faction in parliament, and showed himself to be a rather skillful and efficient politician in this capacity. 

WHY IT MATTERS

The new appointments suggest that President Moon intends to continue his North Korea policy. The current administration will likely continue its efforts to improve relations without challenging the UN sanctions regime and U.S. interests.

Since such policy will not be welcomed in Pyongyang, and it looks like little will change under the new management.

The new appointees (with the exception of Lee) have good experience working with North Korea. It’s unlikely that they’ll achieve any breakthrough in inter-Korean relations, but they are responsible and experienced professionals.

The team change is important domestically though, as it will demonstrate to the South Korean public that the Moon administration is doing what it can in regard to North Korea.

Andrei Lankov provided translation and editing assistance

Edited by James Fretwell and Oliver Hotham