Just a whisker more than 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell down. Swiftly the domino effect of democratization swept across the Eastern Bloc, and a little more than two years later the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, announced the dissolution of the Party from beneath him. Thus, just two years was needed to bring the Iron Curtain down on the 70-year history of communist rule.<\/p>\n
There are many theories about why the utter collapse of Soviet communism was initiated by the collapse of an exemplary satellite country, the German Democratic Republic, or GDR. <\/p>\n
To sum it up, and to see how it links to the future of the Korean peninsula, there are three things to recall. <\/p>\n
First, the socialist economic model failed totally. As time went by, production decreased, materials ceased to be provided in adequate quantities, poverty grew, and the national economies of the Eastern Bloc wound up camped out in the red. The people lost touch with the reason why they had to work, and Marxist economists could no longer calculate how much, or indeed how, to produce the goods the people needed.<\/p>\n
After all, even when a theory is perfectly correct, flaws can easily emerge when it is adapted to society. Since Marxism itself has clear and profound limits, an economic theory based on it could hardly avoid failing.<\/p>\n
Second, political management failed. The authorities believed that they could manage the populace using the secret police and security services to monitor and regulate them. However, this system caused the people to shrink away from risk, lose their individual creativity and suspect their neighbors, while party officials and security officials grew fat on their overweening power. <\/p>\n
Third, foreign policy failed. Since the Stalinist era, the Soviet Union had been pursuing military competition with the countries of the west. In the economic sector, they focused overwhelmingly on military competition, while casting aside concerns about the people\u2019s wellbeing or sustainable economic development. <\/p>\n
In these circumstances, investing in the military at the expense of the needs of the people turned the Soviet Union into a lethargic and wildly inefficient nation. <\/p>\n
So, what lessons are there for us to learn from the 20th anniversary of the collapse of the Berlin Wall? <\/p>\n
Well, although the unification of Germany has largely been successful, the costs have been enormous; social conflict between west and east, not to mention astronomical amounts of money. During the inevitable reunification of the Korean Peninsula, both Koreas will have to go through the same problems. <\/p>\n
However, no two situations are ever exactly the same, and there are several commonalities and differences which need to be considered. <\/p>\n
First of all, just as U.S. and Soviet power was instrumental in German reunification; so Chinese influence is likely to affect Korean unification. However, while German unification was aided by the deterioration of Soviet power, today there are strong and growing powers such as China, the U.S. and Japan surrounding the Korean peninsula. <\/p>\n
Therefore, far greater intellectual and diplomatic insight is required to manage the current situation. <\/p>\n
Secondly, German unification came upon the world all of sudden; even the West German administration did not foresee East Germany\u2019s collapse. However, we already know that the North Korean regime will collapse. It is a big and important difference from the German experience. <\/p>\n
Therefore, we are lucky enough to be able to prepare for unification with rationality, logic and a realistic outlook.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Just a whisker more than 20 years ago, on November 9, 1989, the Berlin Wall fell down. Swiftly the domino effect of democratization swept across the Eastern Bloc, and a little more than two years later the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Mikhail Gorbachev, announced the dissolution of the Party […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":165,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"wikipediapreview_detectlinks":true,"footnotes":""},"categories":[67],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10424","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\n