Page 2 of 2 The facts and fables of a unified Korea
By Andrei Lankov
in 1997 and continued by Roh throughout 2002-2008. The stated goal was to
encourage the gradual evolution of North Korea. The policy's name refers to one
of Aesop's fables, "the North Wind and the Sun". In the fable, the North Wind
and the Sun argue about who is able to remove a cloak from a traveler. The
North Wind blows hard but fails to succeed, since the traveler wraps his cloak
even more tightly to protect himself. The Sun, however,
warms the air, thus forcing the traveler to remove the unnecessary cloak.
Officially, the policy was based on the assumption that a soft approach would
persuade the North to institute large-scale social and economic reforms, more
or less similar to those undertaken in China and Vietnam. However, an important
aspect of the underlying assumptions of this policy was a belief that reform
would prolong the existence of the North Korean state and make possible a
gradual elimination of the huge economic and social gap between the two Koreas.
As Korea expert Aidan Foster-Carter has noted, "Despite the rhetoric of
unification, the
immediate aim [of the 'Sunshine' policy] was to retain two states, but
encourage them to get on better."
In other words, the "Sunshine" policy was, above all, about postponing
unification until some unspecified point in the future when both sides would be
"better prepared" for it. This is what Roh frankly admitted in his recent
speech. The turnabout was complete: in the 1950s, the Seoul regime was deadly
serious about unification and did not make secret of its willingness to use
military force to reach this goal. In the subsequent decades, willingness and
enthusiasm gradually cooled, but efforts to speed up unification were not
abandoned.
In the 1990s, however, the same syrupy pro-unification rhetoric began to be
employed to justify a policy whose goal - at least, in the short and medium
terms - was to maintain division to keep the situation stable and South (but
not North) Koreans affluent.
Meanwhile, even deeper changes began to impact Korean society. The politically
active youngsters of the 1980s (now in their 40s and late 30s) wanted
unification because they were both leftist and nationalist and because they did
not associate it with economic hardships. The next generation was different.
The younger Koreans have moved to the right; they are somewhat less
nationalistic and they believe - rightly or wrongly - that unification will
mean economic disaster. They also do not care much about the North, which for
them is a distant place. After all, it is far more common for the average South
Korean 30-something to visit Paris or Sydney than Pyongyang. As a result, an
increasing number of South Koreans have begun to wonder if they need this
unification after all.
This trend is well reflected by public opinion polls. In 1994, 91.6% of the
South Koreans said they considered unification "necessary". In 2007, according
to a poll conducted by Seoul National University, the number of such people
shrank to 63.8%. This is not a surprise - everybody who interacts with Korean
university students knows that serious doubts about unification are
increasingly common.
These fears are more common among the younger generations, but even older
people are having doubts these days. A Korean businessman in his late 60s,
himself born in what is now North Korea, and with great experience interacting
with Northerners because of his business projects, recently described his
feeling about the unification: "Well, they say there that they are so happy
under the wise guidance of the Dear General. Let them be happy there, if they
like it so much. Meanwhile, we'd rather suffer here a bit under [President] Lee
Myung-bak or whoever will be next. They are so different from us by now. Even
their physical appearance is different, they are so short! So, the later we'll
have unification, the better. In a hundred years, perhaps".
Such views are not typical, but are increasingly popular nonetheless.
Are the two Koreas are drifting apart? Perhaps. But there is another
interesting peculiarity. People express their doubts in private, but open
critique of the unification paradigm still remains a strict taboo. Neither
right nor left wants to be seen as "anti-national", and any politician would
instantly ruin his or her career if they were to openly air the idea of a South
Korean state which should not eventually incorporate the North.
So far, the confederation discourse, so vividly represented by Roh, is used as
a convenient excuse, especially by the left. People do not say they are against
unification in principle: this contradicts all major ideological discourses in
present-day Korea. So, skeptics prefer to say that, while approving unification
in principle, they would strongly prefer it happen peacefully, as a result of
negotiations between governments, and gradually.
The left still insists that a confederation should be a step, clearly assuming
that such a confederation can and should be negotiated with the current
Pyongyang regime (this idea was the center of Roh's recent speech). Needless to
say, the idea of a lasting "confederation" between a booming democracy and a
destitute dictatorship is utterly unrealistic, but people prefer not to ask
hard questions. There is also great irony in the fact that people who made
their names and political careers as champions of the common people and
opponents of dictators in Seoul tend to side with far more brutal dictatorships
in the North and describe all forces of change in the North as "destructive and
destabilizing".
If things take a dramatic turn, and if the North plunges into an acute crisis
(a strong possibility), the South Koreans will have to make a choice. It is
impossible to guess which choice they will make. It is quite probable that the
decades of exposure to the unification rhetoric will become decisive. Despite
all the grave doubts, people will not dare to openly say that they do not want
to share the state with what they perceive as impoverished and under-educated
Northerners.
Nonetheless, one thing is clear: the enthusiasm about unification is waning,
and sooner or later this quiet transformation of the public mind may have
political effects. Ex-president Roh's speech has reminded Koreans about this.
Andrei Lankov is an associate professor in Kookmin University, Seoul, and
adjunct research fellow at the Research School of Pacifica and Asian Studies,
Australian National University. He graduated from Leningrad State University
with a PhD in Far Eastern history and China, with emphasis on Korea. He has
published books and articles on Korea and North Asia.
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