SOUTH KOREAN DOVES

There were three men in a restaurant, a North Korean, a South Korean and an American. Shortly after they arrive, the waiter comes over and says to the trio “Sorry, tonight there’s no steak. There’s a shortage of meat”. The South Korean replied, “What’s sorry?”. The North Korean asked “what’s meat?’ and the American said, “what’s shortage”.

The split between North and South Korea is very real and not a laughing matter. It is more than  just a division on a map. Economically, socially and politically, the two nations have pulled apart, especially with the past 20 years. Until 1976, North Korea was better off than its capitalist brother but since that time, the South has pulled far ahead. The North has been run into the ground by an out of touch government whose stocks have fallen further since the fall of communism in the Soviet Union and elsewhere. The regime has managed to find money to buy top quality overseas produce, bring a whiskey factory piece meal from Scotland and spend a small fortune on producing propaganda art films, but has neglected to ensure its general populace has enough food to survive. This had lead to several famines; the worst of them in 1994 that may have killed up to 3 million people and led to reports of cannibalism in the rural landscape. Driving at night back from Seoul to Paju, my home about 5 kilometres from North Korea illuminates the divide, literally. On the south side are lights, lights that illuminate the south,including the independence highway that would link Seoul with Pyongyang. A lack of lights across the river shows more than the darkness hides, a lack of lights highlighting the electricity and infrastructure problems that plagues the North.



Above: The torpedo that sank the Cheonan, now displayed in the National War Memorial in Seoul. 

Living so close to the border has meant I keep a very interested eye on the news. Recent events such as the torpedoing of the South Korean warship, the Cheonan, by North Korea, which led to the loss of life of 46 South Korean seaman and the recent shelling of Yeonpyeong Island, have put the peninsula back into the spotlight that it is seldom far out of. As of yet, the South has shown considerable restraint in its dealings with the North. The only real casualty has been the South Korean Defence Minister Kim Tae Young, who resigned over complaints that he was too slow to act after the shelling of the island. The question to ask is why is the South showing such restraint? Many other countries antagonized to the same extent would have responded with more than economic sanctions and tersely worded diplomatic messages. So why haven’t the South responded more vigorously? Why hasn’t the conservative Lee Myung Bak government been more assertive?

One of the main reasons would be that the South Korean government wants reunification but only at a pace it can dictate. What the South fears the most is a quick collapse of the North Korean regime. This would spell economic disaster for South Korea. Imagine what would happen after reunification when 5 million poor North Koreans flood into Seoul, taking cut price jobs, the 3D (dirty, dangerous and undesirable) jobs. The economy of the South would stagnate and recede, the wealth of the North would be slow to increase. The example of East and West Germany is often used to demonstrate the difficulty of unifying two countries, joint by a common culture and language but separated by ideology and personal wealth. Only now have East and West Germany became equitable and that took 18 years. The wealth gap between North and South Korea is much larger than that which existed between East and West Germany at their time of unification. Recent polls have indicated that South Koreans are increasingly less likely to want to pay a significant reunification tax; the ties between the two are becoming loose. Direct relatives divided by the DMZ are becoming fewer as the years of division go by (its 60 years this year since the start of the Korean War), although such meetings between siblings divided by war and time are heart wrenching. Koreans I have spoken to, from co-workers to students to generals in the South Korean Army, all express reservations about a possible reunification. The only positive thing I’ve heard is that reunification would mean the vast amount spent on the military in both countries could be slashed.

What about other players in the area? China may view North Korea as a spoilt child but it doesn’t want an end to the regime. For one, North Korea is one of the few Communist states still left (and its brand of nepotistic Stalinism is probably the most pure of all the remaining Communist countries). China doesn’t want its people to witness the collapse of another communist state. Just like South Korea, China would worry about an influx of North Koreans into China (the Chinese border area is a Korean autonomous zone with a pretty porous border). Another reason is that a unified Korea would mean a potentially strong country and close ally of America at its back gate. America doesn’t necessarily want the regime to fall. Who knows what that would mean for North East Asia? Japan probably wouldn’t mind a weaker South Korea, given the competitiveness of South Korea now in areas where Japan has been dominant for decades. It also would get rid of an openly hostile and anti-Japanese regime in North Korea. The North Korean regime no doubt knows that none of the key players (South Korea, China or America) are really dedicated to bringing them down. So they can play a bit, push here and worry here, safe in the knowledge that any reaction will probably be slight and tempered by the fact that no one wants them to fall over. The people who probably most desire change are the people who have the most to gain but are also the people that we know the least about. The North Korean public have lived under this strange form of hereditary communism, seeing the leadership pass from father to son and after the recent anointing of Kim Jong Un, it would seem to grandson. Ultimately, it will probably be their desire to reunify that will one day led to the reunification of the peninsula.