In her January 6th press
conference, President Park Geun Hye said that unification would be something akin to
hitting the jackpot. For me, unification is an opportunity to achieve the prosperity
and development of the Korean Peninsula. President Park’s comments were cut
from a similar cloth.
And yet we have been talking for
some time about the “price of unification.” It is unclear where the figures
come from, but a raft of academic, political and economic analyses have come out
with astronomical calculations for the total cost of unification. These have
caused ordinary Koreans to worry about the potential harm unification could do, and even the possible bankruptcy of a unified Korea.
As a consequence, many South Koreans now have sympathy
for the position of those scholars and Sunshine Policy supporters who contend
that it would be better to avoid the risk of an economically burdensome
unification; rather, they would prefer to go on in the current manner while giving
economic assistance to North Korea. This position is shaped by the belief that the
price of reunification will fall if South Korea pours assistance into North
Korea beforehand.
During ten years of liberal government in
pursuit of this very goal, Sunshine Policy theorists handed over many hundreds
of millions of dollars to Kim Jong Il and poured taxpayers’ money into North
Korea at any sign of trouble. North Korean expectations rose; they got
accustomed to the generosity. The cost of doing business rose commensurately,
too; Kim Jong Il’s ransom became more expensive. An absurd situation unfolded: there
were people visiting North Korea to flatter Kim Jong Il and have their picture
taken standing next to him.
Even now there are some scholars and unification
experts who cleave to this Sunshine Policy approach, explaining that
reunification must be achieved slowly and through economic means; in other
words, by affluent South Korea aiding unfortunate North Korea. Inter-Korean
exchanges, economic cooperation and dialogue are essential, they say.
Despite the fact that the only things we
obtained from ten years of left wing government propping up [North Korea] were
nuclear developments and missiles, such people never mention for how long we
must help the North, how much help we must give them, or how much better North
Korea’s economy must become before its political system will change.
In reality, however, the North Korean economic
crisis wouldn’t be solved even if South Korea provided support for a million years.
The unification we want might never come about.
The economic crisis in North Korea today is
a result of the errors of socialist and communist systems coupled to a
hereditary Suryeongist dictatorship that defends that very system. No matter
how much money North Korea may accumulate, unless the feudal dynastic system
that deprives the North Korean people of their freedoms and human rights changes,
those same people will continue to live in hunger. There will be no overcoming
North Korea’s economic crisis, and, in the end, there is no nuclear solution without
a solution to the difficulties of the North Korean people.
In which case, what is to be done?
The Republic of Korea must change its unification
policy, strategy and tactics.
It was possible for the Republic of Korea to
become the affluent state that it is today because of the liberal democratic
system that President Rhee Syngman founded and the passionate, patriotic desire
of President Park Chung Hee to see the people living well. If the two Koreas were
unified under such a liberal democratic system then it would indeed be a golden
opportunity.
Changing President Park’s “unification is
the jackpot” comment slightly, we can say that “unification with North Korea under
a liberal democratic system is the jackpot.”
Accordingly, what today’s North Korea needs
is a liberal democratic system. If liberal democracy were established in North
Korea, the people would develop an advanced, affluent nation even without
external help. Naturally, if the capital, technologies and experiences of the
Republic of Korea, which overcame its trials via liberal democracy and
industrialization, modernization and advancement, were to buttress that process
then it would take place all the more quickly.
Conversely, if North Korea continues as it
is, unification would not be the jackpot. Unification of a different sort; a
phased unification, or a confederation of states as hypothesized elsewhere,
would be ruinous for all concerned.
The Republic of Korea must stop hesitating
and complete the struggle to extend liberal democracy to the territory of North
Korea. That is the way forward. It is my hope that President Park will open the way to liberal
democratic unification during her term. Only then will unification truly be the
jackpot.
* The views expressed in Guest Columns are independent and not necessarily those of Daily NK.
