hankyoreh

East and West Germans stand on the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate on Nov. 10, 1989, a day before the Berlin Wall fell. (Hankyoreh archives)

The Berlin Wall, a symbol of the Cold War between the Capitalist and Communist worlds, fell on Nov. 9, 1989. Not long afterward, West and East Germany savored the joy of unification, and the Communist regimes of Eastern Europe tumbled down one after another. In just two years, the Soviet Union collapsed as well, making the Cold War a legacy of the past.

Thirty years have passed since the epochal turning point known as the end of the Cold War. It’s frustrating to think that, despite all those changes, the Korean Peninsula still remains the last lonely bastion of the Cold War. We hope that South and North Korea will work together to move beyond the Cold War legacy of confrontation and to open a path to cooperation and reconciliation.

According to reports in the foreign press, those who were present when the Berlin Wall came down remember it as a “surprising and exhilarating experience” and as “completely unexpected.” Wim Wenders, West German director of “Wings of Desire,” recalls that when he first heard that the wall had fallen, he thought that Soviet tanks were rolling across the border.

But it’s widely agreed that the actual fall of the Berlin Wall was the result of West Germany’s consistent and bilateral pursuit of reconciliation, exchange, and cooperation with East Germany, regardless of which party was in power, following the declaration of “Ostpolitik” by West German Chancellor Willy Brandt in 1969. This has important implications for South Korean politics, in which North Korean policy tends to swing like a pendulum between reconciliation and confrontation, depending on whether a progressive or conservative government is in power.

Germany’s reunification did not make everybody happy. The Hankyoreh’s interview with Steffen Mau, a professor at Humboldt University, shows that West and East Germany still have a long way to go before they can overcome their disparity and division and be fully integrated. West Germany has a clear political and economic advantage, while East Germany faces rampant unemployment, low wages, and disgruntlement. Institutional unification is no guarantee of social integration.

If unification occurs before we are ready, it could create new problems. Taking German unification as an example, we need to work on drafting a blueprint about how to achieve inter-Korean reconciliation, exchange, cooperation, and social integration through social consensus.

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