hankyoreh

Park Geun-hye continues to talk about how Korean unification will be like winning the jackpot. After first bringing up the idea at the New Year press conference on Jan. 6, Park went a step further on Jan. 22 at the Davos Forum in Switzerland. “I believe that unification would not only be hitting the jackpot for Korea, but also for all of our neighbors in Northeast Asia,” Park said.

In and of itself, the unification-as-jackpot theory makes a fair amount of sense. If North and South Korea were reunited peacefully, the Korean peninsula would emerge as an economic community, which would also have a positive effect on the three northeastern Chinese provinces and the Russian Far East. Furthermore, this would result in a peace dividend by reducing military spending, while accelerating the economic integration of Northeast Asia.

Another potential advantage of peaceful unification is a reduction of the so-called “Korea discount,” which results from the fact that the peninsula is divided. Indeed, reducing popular opposition to unification and promoting a positive attitude to the subject is one of the president’s responsibilities. This is especially true considering that the younger generation is leery of the cost of unification and tends to view it not as necessary but rather as optional.

But without any concrete plan for bringing it about, the unification-as-jackpot talk is nothing more than hot air. The prerequisite for peaceful unification is the majority of people in North and South Korea agreeing to political and military unification based on progress in cooperation and exchange and gradual economic and social integration. That is to say, without an ongoing effort to create a national community, unification will not happen.

When we consider this, the South Korean government’s current policy toward North Korea is wholly incompatible with all the talk about unification being like hitting the jackpot. The government keeps pressuring North Korea to change, but it has not shown itself to be willing to work on inter-Korean relations.

Unification Minister Ryoo Kihl-jae denied the significance of how inter-Korean relations improved during the administrations of former presidents Kim Dae-jung and Roh Moo-hyun. According to Ryoo, North and South remained in the same framework of hostile confrontation even then.

The current discussion of unification being like a jackpot could actually add to the difficulty of the unification process. The greatest cause for concern is that the jackpot theory of unification could combine with calls for the collapse of North Korea, leading to increased tensions.

Signs of this can already be seen. On Jan. 22, Park emphasized that unification would ease the pain of North Korean people who are suffering under the yoke of a tyrant. In effect, the South Korean president officially described the North Korean leader as a dictator - not as a partner for dialogue, but as someone who must be replaced or removed.

At the same time, senior government officials continue to talk about a sudden change in the North. National Intelligence Service director Nam Jae-joon has been quoted in the media as saying at an end-of-the-year party that the North Korean regime would collapse and that the peninsula would be reunited under a free government by 2015.

It is no coincidence that South Korean administrations that are unwilling to patiently work on promoting exchange and cooperation with the North are the most likely to talk about unification for political ends. The “unification pot” project (a fund of donations collected for the costs of unification) carried out under the administration of former president Lee Myung-bak - which sounded good in theory but proved useless in practice - is one recent example. The current talk about unification as jackpot does not seem much different.

Please direct questions or comments to [english@hani.co.kr]