Sunshine Policy
Despite both the positive and negative reactions and criticism about the Sunshine Policy, there is still a debate going on today about the effectiveness of the Sunshine Policy. Even the antagonists of the Sunshine Policy were in agreement that the humanitarian emergency aid that was released from the international community, as well as South Korea, contributed to the relief of North Korea's great famine during the late 1990s. However, the ensuing cooperation policies in fact produced a backlash to goodwill argument stating that the government guided economic assistance and also direct investment instead saved or even brought back the hyper militarized North Korean regime, which because of these delays the inevitable economic reforms consequently stalled the nuclear crisis. This debate now had entered a very decisive combination. The latest supposedly alleged hydrogen bomb test seemed to very much falsify the effectiveness and also the ability to produce the desired result of positive inducement policies based on the Sunshine Policy. The idea was that South Korean economics assistance could succeed in persuading North Korea's post-communist reform and opening, which would hopefully promote peace between North Korea and South Korea. Even with all this effort and good intentions that were put into the Sunshine Policy, the policy itself began to fall apart and would soon be no more. The South Korean government officially acknowledged the reverse effects of both the current and existing inducement approaches. The President of Korea at the time President Park Geun Hye even stated during this time “Gone are the days when we caved into the North’s provocations and unconditionally pumped aid into the North” This statement was given as an address to the National Assembly in South Korea. Because of this critical reappraisal, this led to the complete shutdown of the Kaeseong Industrial Complex. The Kaeseong Industrial Complex was the very last symbol of the Sunshine Policy. The building was eventually closed on February 11, 2016.