Seoul, South Korea (CNN) -- South Korea has denounced a policy that called for a peaceful engagement with North Korea as a failure.
An annual white paper published by Seoul's Ministry of Unification slammed the decade-long engagement policy, which cost South Korea $4.5 billion.
The policy did not change North Korea's "perverse" policies, the report said Wednesday.
"Despite outward development over the past decade, inter-Korean relations have been under criticism from the public in terms of quality and process," the Chosun Ilbo newspaper quoted the white paper as saying. "They have in fact become increasingly disillusioned with the North and more worried about security as the North continued its nuclear arms program".
The sinking of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, which killed 46 sailors earlier this year, showed that the North is "... consistently maintaining a reunification doctrine based on a strategy to turn the entire Korean Peninsula communist despite its outward policy in favor of cooperation and reconciliation".
The ministry confirmed the newspaper report.
The Sunshine Policy is based on the Aesop fable of a warm sun forcing a man to divest his coat after a cold wind had failed to do so. It lasted between 1998 and 2008.
CNN
