Former South Korean President Kim Dae-jung’s Sunshine Policy promoting engagement with North Korea enjoys a mixed public legacy, with critics pointing to its failure to bring about immediate rapprochement between the two Koreas.

Yet that appraisal, while understandable on an emotional level given the Korean Peninsula’s long division, overlooks the policy’s real success in easing the political mood between the Koreas and preparing the soil for their future reconciliation.

For evidence of this impact we need only examine North Korea’s mass culture, which exhibited a striking change in tone on the