More than two decades after the cold war ended elsewhere, it continues undiminished on the Korean Peninsula. The division of the Korean nation into competing North and South Korean states and the destructive war that followed constitute one of the great, and still unresolved, tragedies of the 20th century. "Peacemaker" is the memoir of Lim Dong-won, former South Korean unification minister and architect of Nobel Peace Prize winner Kim Dae-Jung's sunshine policy toward North Korea.

As both witness and participant, Lim traces the process of twenty years of diplomatic negotiations with...