I was talking to a few Koreans (South) that now live in Chicago and about North Korea now that Kim is gone and they were totally in agreement, that most South Koreans like the “ideal” of unification but in reality do not want it.
They say it will cost South Korea too much, it will way lower the standard of living in South Korea and won’t help the nation anyway. And they would just as soon North Korea be peaceful but stay its own way.
Does anyone in Korea post here? Or do you know Koreans? How do you think they feel about it.
I know the East German reunification was quite a strain on West Germany which (I think was) a lot more economically sound than South Korea.
In what ways would you consider West Germany pre-unification more economically sound than current South Korea? South Korea is a remarkably powerful and stable economy, despite frequent credit downgrades by credit rating agencies. Economy of South Korea - Wikipedia
Korean Doper **HazelNutCoffee **starts off a discussion on this very matter in this post of one of the death-of-Kim threads, replying on the “no” side to an overoptimistic OP, but the follow-ups to that became kind of lost among a semi-derail about the OP’s choice of nickname.
South Korea is arguably a little less strong now than West Germany was then.
The BIIIG differnce is that East Germany, bad as it was, was in vastly *better *shape than North Korea is now. And in terms of relative population, etc., sizes WG was larger vs EG than SK is vs. NK.
So relatively speaking, SK will inherit a rather bigger and much poorer NK than what WG had to deal with.
Pretty much everything I’ve ever read says SK wants a trouble-free NK. If a magic wand was available, reunification would be nice. But absent a magic wand, having NK just behave itself & be a normal neighboring country would be fine. It seems any SK person with half a clue recognizes the near fatal burden that trying to repair & reunify NK would represent.
Up until the past couple of years most South Koreans (especially of the younger generations) believed in the concept of reunification that would result in the whole of Korea looking like South Korea. Maybe not right away, but after a transitional period of assimilation.
If North Korea wanted to look like South Korea, they could give up power and attempt to work their people into a democratic, capitalistic, technologically advanced society.
But the North Korean power structure doesn’t want that. IMO, their idea of a unified Korea would have the South looking like the North.
The past couple of years have caused many South Koreans to revisit their pollyanic view of what reunification would entail. Best case scenario–extreme economic and social turmoil as the Northern people/socieity attempt to assimilate. Worst case–South Korea becomes annexed under all-out invasion backed by threat of all-out nuclear war. That would be unification all right, but somehow I don’t think that’s what most South Koreans think about when they think of “unification.” But don’t kid yourselves into thinking that’s not what the North power structure thinks about.
I was stationed in Seoul for three years, at three different times. The first time I was there, 1987-88, there was much more of a feeling from the people I met, interviewed or called friends that reunification would be a good thing. This was during the Olympics, and national pride was higher than I would ever see in my next two stays.
In 1993-94 the idea of reunification had cooled considerably for most people I talked to. The understanding that they were light years ahead of the North Koreans in development and lifestyle had placed a pall over the idea. Knowing that the transition would cost billions of dollars, and probably take decades to straighted out made people think twice.
Also a generation of Koreans’ had grown up without the North being there, so it was less of an issue for them.
My last trip was in 1996-97, and although there were occasional protests, usually in the university districts about reunification, you hardly heard the term used on local media. During this time, the North Koreans had made several incursions into the South to wreak havoc and
sow discordance. Between the bombing of flight 858, and the submarine attack and subsequent manhunt, most South Korean’s saw the North as terrorists.
I haven’t been there in 14 years, but I can’t imagine that the tide of support for reunification would have turned that substantially.
They’ve run plenty of economic analysis, and the reality is that even in the best of circumstances, there would be no way to integrate the North Korean economy into the South Korean one without a massive decrease in the South’s lifestyle.
East Germany had reasonably educated, skilled workers hampered by a crappy economic system. North Korea has poorly educated, often unskilled labor. Add that to a need to build a TON of infrastructure, and you have an economic impossibility. It’d be like the US trying to annex a much poorer Mexico and expecting to have everyone living a US-level lifestyle in a few years. At best, it’d take decades, and it’d be a messy journey.
Throw in that reunification would create a whole new planet of tensions with China, and it all seems less attractive in practice than in theory.
It’s much worse than having to deal with an influx of poorly educated, unskilled population. The North Korean people have been so brainwashed into the cult of personality of the Kim Il Sung myth that they have no concept of what “normal” society is like. At least the poor Mexicans have some sort of frame of reference to what the real world is like. The vast majority of the North Korean population does not.
Imagine a school child going into a library, and every book was either written by Kim Il Sung or purported to be written by Kim Il Sung. Imagine being told that you live in a paradise and if it were not for the divine benevolence of Kim Il Sung, your life would be the living hell that the rest of the world lives in.
Imagine that if someone in your family questioned the system or the divine nature of Kim Il Sung, that you could wake up with your child missing–she being taken off to a reeducation camp, never to be seen again.
The psychological scars of the North Korean population (not to mention the physical scars of torture and starvation) is one of the biggest crimes against humanity since the Holocaust.
You can’t just give people like this money, send them to school, and assume any sort of assimilation into normal society. At least the ones who defect know enough about the world to try to escape their hell–but even these people have a tremendously difficult time fitting into South Korean society.
I think the most likely scenario from the collapse of the present North Korean regime is in fact the installation of another non-democratic ‘communist’ state by China, but rather less insane and more committed to modernisation and shrinking the economic role of the state, like China’s regime currently is.
The consequences of reunification seem to be based on the premise that the North Korean leadership throws in the towel, and admits that their economic model has been a disaster.
So what happens if they make that same admission but don’t reunify? Suppose Kim Young 'Un throws open the doors and says “hey, everyone, got the cheapest labor in the world right here! We’ll sew your sneakers and assemble your iPods for half what you’re paying anywhere else.”
It might take them a whole to build up their skilled labor force to directly compete with South Korea. But would they then start to draw investment away from the South? It seems like they could negatively impact the South’s economy whether Seoul agrees to official reunification or not.
The South Koreans will hire/exploit the North Koreans to do the really hard work at prices even they can afford. Ship the really nasty parts of manufacturing to the North. Have em grow/make stuff the South will pay for to consume but on the cheap. Allow them to “migrate” to do their lawns and open North Korean eateries. Perhaps even have the North make drugs the South wants and is willing to pay for. Win wins all the way around. Poor northerners get to make at least some money. The south gets cheaper stuff and affordable services they otherwise would do themselves. Kinda like the relationship between the United States and Mexico.
I am being a bit tongue in cheek but I think there is some truth to this. Cheap labour and cheap imported crap supposedley benefits America more than it hurts us. So, shouldn’t the same be true here?
I doubt they’d affect the South Korean economy more than, say, the one billion Chinese people next door. Any problem that cheap labor brings to the South Korean market has already been reconciled long ago.
It will be at least two generations (probably more likely three or four, based on experiences in other Asian countries) before North Korea could build up an educated workforce that could compete for first-world jobs. You gotta figure that you need to build universities, train the first round of professors at these elite schools, and then those professors can train the next generation to go out regional universities, and only then could average people start to get a quality education.
A China-style economic reform would benefit South Korea if they become trade partners. I think if anyone was threatened by that kind of reform, it’d be China itself.
Also note that economic reform doesn’t need to go hand in hand with political reform. China hasn’t changed structurally since Stalinist days. The absolute power is still there, even if it is not being used (much.)
If the people of North and South Korea are totally free to trade with each other and compete for the same jobs, what’s the difference (economically, at least) between that and full reunification? A reunified Korea would take on more social spending to take care of people in the (former) North. There might also be a peace dividend by not having to maintain the military posture they have now.
Are those really enough to make reunification a huge burden, while free economic ties would be a boon?
Heck, I don’t know. Just throwing that out there. But you will note I did throw a “supposedly” in there because I am not convinced that ultra free trade and having a poor country with desperate people south of the border benifits America as a whole as much as some people claim.
I don’t know the answer, either. The question is whether South Koreans want reunification. I’m just wondering if it may not be that simple a choice for them. If North Korea were determined to open up, the South would have to deal with some economic consequences whether they wanted them or not.
I’m living in Korea right now, and even among the older generations (30-40, 40-50), there’s so little desire for re-unification as to make the possibility seem absurd. I’ve spoken to quite a few people, and the common attitude is that re-unification would result in undue hardship for South Koreans, culturally, politically, and economically. I’ve only heard one lukewarm admission of support for re-unification, and that was mostly, “Well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen.”
Perhaps the greatest support for re-unification comes from the elderly, who are old enough to remember when Korea was one country. Hardly anybody living in Korea today feels that kind of connection to North Korea.