The Marmot’s Hole

(by guest blogger Andy Jackson)

I just came across a piece in a series of articles being reprinted in the World Peace Herald (a name that just screams kumbaya quality) on ‘crises that face North and South Korea and the prospects for a unified Korea.’

The most recent piece is on the shift in South Korean reunification strategy under Kim Dae-jung.

The first thing to note from the piece is that just about every South Korean leader since liberation has sought reunification, although their strategies differed. Here is a quick overview:

(Park Chung-hee’s) policy was known as “Construction first, Unification second. “Park stated his determination in his inaugural address to “confront communism and achieve unification of the homeland through the victory of democracy.”

As a result, the Park government focused almost exclusively on domestic politics throughout the decade of the 1960s, and began taking steps toward unification only in the 1970s…

Chun (Doo-hwan)’s was South Korea’s first-ever comprehensive unification proposal, and marked the first time that either side allowed for the possibility of mutual recognition of their contrasting political and social systems and for having each side propose a separate draft of a constitution for a unified Korea.

Subsequent unification proposals from South Korea vacillated in their degree of flexibility toward the North. These included President Roh Tae Woo’s 1989 proposal called a “Korean National Community Unification Formula” that set out a three-stage unification process involving North-South dialogue and a North-South confederation finally leading to a unified democratic republic.

President Kim Young Sam on August 15, 1994, declared an end to the era of competition between North and South Korea over whose political and social was the better. Kim advocated the legitimacy of a unification plan based on a liberal democratic system.

Consistent in all these South Korean proposals was the assumption that the South, because it was vastly superior in economic strength, would eventually absorb the North.

I think the piece does not give Syngman Rhee due respect in that it claims his government did not have a reunification policy. It did have a reunification policy. It was called ‘don’t let the war end.’

Other than that, it is so far, so good. It is a nice little historic overview.

But I think the piece starts to break down when it gets to the Kim Dae-jung administration.

The piece notes (correctly in my view) that the main change between Kim’s policy from that of previous administrations was one of feelings:

“The Kim Dae Jung government determined that North Korea feared unification by absorption and so was avoiding dialoguing with the South Korea,” said Hoon Yong Seung, a chief researcher at Samsung Economic Institute. “Based on this judgment, the Kim government began to focus on building the foundations for peace,” he said.

How do you build a foundation of peace?

With money.

Lots and lots of money.

So are there now better feelings between Seoul and Pyongyang? Yes.

Is Korea any closer to reunification? No.

As is well known, the Kim Dae-jung/Roh Moo-hyun policy is to help North Korea develop its economy or at least prevent a collapse of the Kim Jong-il regime. They have pointed out that reunification with a collapsed North Korean economy would be massively expensive (although there is disagreement over how expensive reunification would be). So Seoul wants to pump money into North Korea in the hope that eventual reunification with a less economically moribund North Korea would not be prohibitively expensive.

It is a nice theory but the problem is that regimes do not give up power voluntarily. All this love between Pyongyang and Seoul is fine up to the point were Kim Jong-il feels that his hold on power might be threatened. Pyongyang will accept investment and aid to help it stay in power but it will not accept reforms that would undercut its hold on power or measures to reunify Korea (which, under any democratic system, would put Kim Jong-il out of power and perhaps even on the gallows).

So what we really have here is a partnership to avoid reunification.

Let me leave you with this gem from the World Peace Herald article:

[Kim Dae-jung's policy] shifted the focus from unification by absorption to unification by the Korean people’s own initiative.

Can someone tell me what in the hell that means?