Resurrected because of this The Chosun Daily opinion polling report published today..
The key finding here, though, is this. (The bolding is mine.)
South Korea resident, former China resident checking in. North Koreans are literally the cousins of South Koreans. This was a more compelling factor 20-30 years ago, but it’s still a consideration. When my students watch the Olympics, N. Koreans are their most bitter rivals, but if they are watching North Korea against any other country, especially Japan, they root for their cousins.
China, whatever the government’s position (they are fine with keeping the North separate), the people have about the same opinion of Kim Jong Un that you have and for a lot of the same reasons. Chinese have a lot of respect for South Korean and would gleefully inform me that “They are a First World country!” Korean is widely spoken in the border region of China.
Reunification is not impossible, it just isn’t that big a priority for anyone at this point.
Here’s another consideration. A picture of South Korea and North Korea at night from space. The tremendous poverty in NK and the enormous economic divide between the two regions is surely a big obstacle to reunification. Who is going to fund the rehabilitation and industrialization of NK?
Somehow I forgot to post the picture. It shows the stark difference in the level of industrialization in the south vs the north.
If North Korea could transition into a stable, safe, capitalist economy overnight then investment would absolutely flood in. Just by virtue of its location and who its neighbours are.
This is not to make light of the challenges, I’m just saying that it would not solely be the government cutting cheques.
I recently posted Does North Korea really still hope to reunify the Koreas?
I just don’t understand why they’d want to reunify. It’s been almost a century, and they’re different countries now. History moves on. At some point in the future, the fact that what we now know as North Korea and South Korea were once the same country will be nothing more than a historical footnote.
I was born in Rhodesia (1976) which split into North and South Rhodesia, and then gained Independence and renamed themselves Zambia and Zimbabwe.
Neither country seeks reunification. The two countries are on friendly terms, but but neither wants to give up their sovereignty.
At the risk of offending you, (any going very far off topic, to hopefully not offending the mods) that too is the attitude of both Palestine and Israel (aside from the “friendly” part.) Even if a two state solution is reached, it will be on terms of mutual disgruntlement.
Side note:
I imagine you have seen the excellent Netflix series, “Fauda”? It is told very much from the Israeli perspective, the flawed heros are all special IDF infiltration team members. But it does humanise both the Palestinians, their military leaders as well as the Israeli Army.
I’m not offended. I still believe in a 2-state solution, although I’ve given up any hope that it will be easy or that any of the sides will walk away happy.
But the fact that I’m Israeli informs my view of history, I suppose. Israel existed 2000 years ago, then it ceased to exist, then it existed again, and hopefully it will continue to exist for centuries in the future. The world is constantly in flux. Maybe Korea will reunite in 2000 years. Who knows?
Rhodesia was always a European construct created by the colonial powers with little to no regard to the ethnicities living in the region. In contrast Korean has been an ethnic, cultural and linguistic identity for millennia.
In the case of the Israeli/ Palestinian conflict, I fear that the Palestinian leaders, like North Korea, have institutionalized the conflict to the point where they wouldn’t know what to do if peace ever did break out.
(Back to Korea)
Because Korea as a cultural entity goes back at least a couple of thousand years, even though they were not unified under one government until more recently. Koreans (in my experience) are fiercely proud of their culture and history. They were occupied by Japan from 1910 until 1945, and many of them still hate Japan, largely (in my opinion) because Japan tried so hard to suppress Korean culture during that time. As others have pointed out, there are still a lot of family connections between the two countries. So there are reasons.
Think about east and west Germany. Why would west Germany have been interested in reunifying? After all, Germany was only a single country for a few decades before it was smashed to pieces (1871 to 1945). East Germany was a huge liability, and they are still working on rehabilitating it. Unified Germany is now more of an economic powerhouse than ever.
The unification of Korea does not appear to be anything that is likely to happen soon, but if something were to change and it became possible, and if China didn’t stand in the way, the results could be similar to what happened in Germany.
But Israel and Palestine are very different than North and South Korea. Israelis and Palestinians are largely ethnic, language and religious different (yes, I know, there are some Arabs in Israel.) North and South Korea share the same ethnicity, language (albeit with modest differences) and more tied history, a lot more in common.