hankyoreh

By Kim Oi-hyun

Five months after South Korean President Park Geun-hye coined the phrase “Korean unification as jackpot” during her first press conference of 2014, the views of progressives and conservatives on the slogan remain as divided as ever. The conservatives see unification as an opportunity, while the progressives see it as a process.

Yu Ho-yeol, a right-leaning professor of North Korean Studies at Korea University, says, “The first and greatest reason that unification would be a jackpot is that unification of Korea would bring immense economic benefits.” On June 12 at an academic conference organized by the Korea Peace Forum on the 14th Anniversary of the June 15th Inter-Korean Summit Talks, Yu suggested, “It would open up the door to new economic growth across the entire peninsula.” He added, “It would once again enjoy the traditional advantages of a peninsular state by becoming both a hub nation in the middle of East Asia, and a center for trade and logistics connecting the continent and the seas.”

Kim Yeon-cheol, a progressive-leaning professor of Unification Studies at Inje University, agreed that unification offered significant benefits. “In the long term, the cost of unification is finite, but its benefits are infinite,” Kim said.

Kim, though argues the benefits of unification are less clear given that experts divided about the actual state of North Korea‘s mineral resource, which is often touted as being highly lucrative. Kim contends that a priority should be placed instead on the process towards reunification. He suggests a focus on both narrowing the wage gap between North Korea and South Korea, and lessening institutional differences prior to unification.

The two presenters also diverge on the state of inter-Korean relations. “The government aims to improve inter-Korean relations, and bring about peaceful reunification based on a refusal to tolerate North Korean nuclear weapons and reliable security,” says Yu in a positive appraisal of the Park administration. In contrast, Yu has less positive things to say about the Kim Jong-un administration and contends, “Kim Jong-un’s domestic and foreign policy initiatives are still unstable, and in his foreign policy, his strategic judgment is either lacking or difficult to predict.”

Before offering an assessment of North Korea, Kim drew attention to the Park administration‘s future-oriented language and hard-line policy. Kim says that the administration’s emphasis on the instability of the North Korea regime and the possibility of its sudden collapse, connected with the execution of Jang Sung-thaek, prevents it from moving forward with talks or negotiations. In the end, Kim says, all that is left is preparing for sanctions against North Korea or unification by absorption.

During the opening address at the conference, former Unification Minister Lim Dong-won emphasized that in order to realize President Park‘s initiatives toward North Korea, including her campaign pledge towards establishing a trust-building process for the Korean Peninsula and Dresden Declaration, it is necessary to make an agreement to abide by the June 15 Joint Statement, and rescind the May 24 Measure.

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