Korea: Surprising Excitement about Unification (Part 1 & 2)○Richard Bush（2014.01.22 & 24）

【Comment】

Nonetheless, what will SK do, if she expects armed conflicts between China and Japan in the near future, say in 2014, the second 60^th anniversary of the First Sino-Japan War of 1894?

The major players in East Asia are all expecting the big “change.”
It seems to me that Obama knows and cares nothing about the actual mentality and atmosphere in fluctuating Asia.    revised on 20140128

Korea: Surprising Excitement about Unification (Part 1)○Richard Bush（2014.01.22）http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/01/22-korean-reunification-bush

I’m finishing up a brief trip to South Korea, where the most frequent topic of discussion is unification with the North.  That, of course, has been the goal of the Republic of Korea for decades, and President Park Geun-hye stated in her inaugural address eleven months ago that laying the foundation for unification of the Korean peninsula was one of the four major objectives of her administration.  But in her New Year’s Day press conference this year, she proclaimed that unification would be a “jackpot” for the Korean people.  Some newspapers devoted extensive coverage to the different aspects of unification and the consequences for South Korea.  Suddenly, the dream of a Korean Peninsula that is whole, prosperous, and free was less of an illusion.

The likely reason for this sudden exuberance was North Korean leader Kim Jong-Un’s purge and execution of his uncle Jang Song Taek last year.  That there was a rift in the Kim “royal family” led some in the South to think that the North Korean regime was more brittle than it had seemed.  And, since that regime and its hostile policies had been the main reason for the continuing division of the Peninsula, perhaps unification was more imminent than they had ever thought.

Of course, the people of South Korea understand fully the complexities surrounding unification and the sacrifices that the South will have to make to bring a better life to their northern cousins.  There are, moreover, significant disagreements over how unification will occur (rapidly or slowly, peacefully or violently); what the final outcome will look like; and the costs that South Korea will have to bear.  There will be, after all, a difference between the formal act of unification, hard as that may be, and the much tougher job of integrating two very different economic, political, and social systems into one national community.  There are also concerns about the implications for regional peace and stability.  In particular, what will be the consequences for the alliance with the United States, since North Korea, the principal object of the alliance will no longer exist?  What will happen to relations with China, which fears that a united peninsula could become a platform for containing it?

Young South Koreans, who came of age in a prosperous and democratic society probably have more reluctance about unification than their elders, who witnessed the trauma of the Korean War and the poverty that followed.  Still, one gets the sense that the logjam that has persisted for so long is beginning to break, and that some South Koreans dare to dream.

Korea: Surprising Excitement about Unification (Part 2)○Richard Bush（2014.01.24）http://www.brookings.edu/blogs/up-front/posts/2014/01/24-korean-unification-us-bush

I just returned from South Korea, where Brookings and the Korea Research Institute for Strategy co-sponsored a conference on cooperation between the United States and the Republic of Korea in preparing for the unification of the Korean Peninsula.  The conference addressed a number of questions: how soon and in what way will unification take place; what’s the impact of recent political turmoil in North Korea, and what will be the role of China.

A subtext of the conference was the difference, when it comes to Korea, between unification and integration. Unification refers to the formal, legal end to the post-World War II division of the Korean Peninsula, combining the Republic of Korea (ROK) in the south and the Democratic People’s Republic (DPRK) in the north.  Integration refers to the process by which the very different economic, political, social, and cultural systems on the two sides of the Demilitarized Zone are knit back together.  (An analogy: the United States was reunified after the Civil War, but the southern states that had seceded were not reintegrated into the nation for at least another century.)

Korean unification has often seemed like a bridge too far.  The ROK and DPRK have been adversaries for decades, each with its own formula for unification based on conflicting values.  Each sought to triumph over the other.  As difficult as unification has been, however, integration will likely be a lot harder.  South Korea is a vibrant democracy with a thriving capitalist economy and a lively, cosmopolitan culture.  North Korea is a fairly brutal totalitarian system with a state-dominated economy and state-imposed caste system.  The South has excelled at being a part of the international system; the North has cut itself off. Each country is very Korean, but in very different ways.  When the time comes, integration will require the re-wiring of the two systems.  The degree of change will likely be far-reaching in the North, and be especially difficult if it comes after some sort of regime collapse.

There have been competing ideas about whether unification or integration will come first.  The Western European example, which apparently animated South Korea’s policy for a couple of decades, was that integration would come first and gradually create an environment in which unification could occur.  The “sunshine policy” of the late Kim Dae Jung, who served as president of the ROK from 1998 to 2003 was the prime expression of this integration-first approach.  The hope in the South was (and still is) that unification would be the end result of a gradual, negotiated and peaceful process in which the DPRK would accommodate to and be absorbed by the ROK.

In the alternative scenario, unification comes first but occurs after some convulsive, abrupt, and probably violent chain of events in the North, as the change-resistant system collapses of its own weight.  Integration follows unification.  The DPRK becomes, in effect, the defeated ward of the ROK, which must manage and underwrite the protracted rehabilitation and assimilation of a failed system and a people who have been cut off from the world for decades.

I don’t know which sequence the Peninsula will follow.  Integration-then-unification would probably be easier for both parts of the Peninsula, but because the leaders of the North refuse to admit that their policies have failed, unification-then-integration seems more likely.