South Korea’s Sunshine Policy: Rocky dreams, Death Wish reality?

The Lee Administration seems hopeful that there’s purpose in securing a summit with North Korea. Let’s call it a Sunshine Policy sequel.

Now, to be fair, sequels are not always bad. But it pays to remember, once you go over the third sequel, it gets much harder to maintain audience interest. Recognizing that life imitates art (and that my conceptualization of art derives from 1980s action films). Let’s look at two Hollywood blockbuster sequels and see if we can gain any insight into the trajectory of the next sequel.

The original Sunshine Policy was Kim Dae-jung’s (1998–2003) masterpiece. It was a cinematic success from nothing. He came up with the idea (or at least that’s what is widely thought), wrote the script, played a huge role in its direction, and of course, played the starring role.

Essentially, Kim was to the Sunshine Policy what Sylvester Stallone (the King of All Sequels) was to Rocky. AND what a script, improbable but inspiring: a democracy extending warmth to its hostile sibling. Kim’s 2000 summit with Kim Jong-il was his title fight — full of drama, optimism, and an Oscar-worthy ending with the Nobel Peace Prize.

The storyline was simple and compelling: engage, cooperate, reduce tensions. Like Rocky’s training montage, images of family reunions and economic projects gave audiences a reason to believe. It was undoubtedly a success, but it left the story hanging. We all knew there had to be a sequel.

Critics pointed to flaws — the financial inducements for the summit, the unresolved nuclear question — but the original had heart and we were willing to watch the next installment. So we watched Roh Moo-hyun (2003–2008) and Sunshine Policy II - the uninspiring equivalent of Rocky II .

As with many sequels, it lacked freshness. It was a continuation rather than a reinvention. Roh promised expanded cooperation and greater autonomy from U.S. influence, but North Korea’s 2006 nuclear test undercut the script. The film had spectacle, but not coherence. The 2007 summit with Kim Jong-il was meant as the climactic rematch, but viewers were split: some saw persistence, others saw repetition and diminishing returns.

After conservative presidents shelved the franchise, Moon Jae-in (2017–2022) staged a revival. Much like Rocky III, there was a new, younger and more seemingly dangerous rival (Kim Jong-un as Clubber Lang), and a new training partner (Donald Trump as Apollo Creed). Moon’s diplomacy in 2018 — the Olympics, summits with Kim Jong-un, and trilogues with Donald Trump — played like Rocky III.

The imagery was powerful. Moon and Kim walking hand-in-hand across the DMZ was his training montage, rekindling nostalgia for the franchise. For a moment, the public believed in the comeback. But as with Rocky III, the revival was short on narrative depth. The idea of being able to rekindle the same narrative and just move the characters around stretched credulity. Talks collapsed at Hanoi in 2019. The revival delivered spectacle, but no enduring resolution.

Now comes Lee Jae-myung (2025– ). If the analogy holds, his Sunshine Policy would be Rocky IV.

Now Rocky IV is unique in sequels. It went one past the routine accepted franchise sequel number and challenged expectations. It essentially transformed the storyline from “underdog faces and overcomes a challenge” to “national hero takes on the evil empire”. It brought the gung-ho patriotism of the Cold War to each pizza-eating, coke-slurping, boxing wannabe who sits in the corner of every Pizza Hut on all-you-can-eat night listening to Eye of the Tiger on his walkman. It gave the franchise a new frame and narrative. Rocky defeats Ivan Drago, symbolically toppling the Soviet foe. An awesome spectacle, pushing the Rocky series into new fields.

But here reality diverges. Lee hasn’t yet offered a new frame or narrative reinvention. Instead of a dramatic Cold War or patriotic reimagining, so far we’ve got tired dialogue about dialogue, weak gestures toward engagement, and little public enthusiasm. Where Rocky IV was bold, cinematic, and absurdly over the top, Lee’s sequel is muted, formulaic, and uninspired.

And this is the crux: life does imitate art - just not always the art you hope for.

The Sunshine Policy was never really Rocky. The Sunshine Policy has no fresh frames. It has recycled scripts. Summit. Summit. Summit. Ad Nauseam. Next sequel - oh, wait… let’s do another summit! Each new attempt at revival promises narrative breakthroughs but delivers diminishing returns.

Public interest wanes. Optimism fades. Creativity is dead. What remains is fatigue, disbelief, and cynicism.

If we are honest, the Sunshine Policy has never resembled Rocky. It’s always resembled Death Wish.

The Death Wish series began in the 1970s as a gritty commentary on urban violence. By the 1980s and 1990s, it had collapsed into increasingly unbelievable sequels: Charles Bronson, aging and implausible, gunning down endless waves of criminals. Each installment promised intensity, but the plots grew thinner, the creativity weaker, the audiences smaller.

The Death Wish series began in 1974 as a gritty commentary on urban violence. Set in decaying New York, the original felt raw and unsettling, with Charles Bronson—then in his fifties—believable as an ordinary man turned vigilante. Its modest budget suited the film’s realism and moral ambiguity, making it both provocative and memorable.

By Death Wish II (1982), the series was already slipping. Shifted to Los Angeles, it relied on exploitation and shock, while Bronson, now in his sixties, looked less like an everyman. Death Wish 3 (1985) abandoned any subtlety altogether, offering cartoonish gangs, endless shootouts, and an aging star mowing down criminals in what played more like parody than thriller.

The final entries sealed the decline. Death Wish 4 (1987) looked like a TV movie, with simplistic villains and a weary Bronson at sixty-six. Death Wish V (1994), filmed cheaply in Canada with Bronson at seventy-three, was a lifeless, embarassing finale. What began as a tense social critique ended as hollow pulp—overstretched, implausible, and drained of both creativity and audience.

That is the Sunshine Policy’s trajectory. Kim’s original carried conviction, but each continuation — Roh’s, Moon’s, and now Lee’s — has felt less believable, less effective, and less connected to reality. North Korea’s nuclear advances and hardened posture have made engagement look ever more detached from the strategic context. What began as hopeful realism has dwindled into hollow repetition.

Comparisons to Rocky are flattering, but misleading. Rocky has persistence and adaptability; its sequels reinvented themselves for new audiences, even decades later. Now, they’re not great by any means - but they still draw a crowd. The Sunshine Policy does not. Its sequels are now stale and unconvincing, weighed down by repetition rather than lifted by reinvention.

The harsh truth is that the Sunshine Policy belongs in the Death Wish category: a franchise that began with incredible grit but descended into formula, sustained more by habit than creativity. Lee Jae-myung’s attempts so far do not signal a bold new chapter, but rather confirm the fatigue. Life sometimes imitates art, but here it has followed the wrong script — not Rocky’s enduring fight, but Death Wish’s implausible decline.